Yanis Varoufakis, while condemning Israel's apartheid and genocide in Gaza, has laundered Zionist narratives by equating Palestinian resistance with Israeli settler violence and supporting a two-state framework that entrenches ethnic separation.
Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister and DiEM25 leader, critiques Israel's occupation as apartheid yet perpetuates liberal Zionist myths by insisting Palestinians renounce resistance for a truncated state, rejecting one-state equality, and echoing Zionist calls.
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Yanis Varoufakis positions himself as a vocal critic of Israel's policies toward Palestinians, frequently labeling the occupation an apartheid system and decrying Western complicity in Gaza's bombardment and siege. He has compiled lists of Israel's violations of international law since October 2023, including the denial of essentials like water and fuel to 2.3 million people, which he describes as collective punishment qualifying as genocide.
Yet Varoufakis's interventions consistently launder Zionist ideology under the guise of balanced advocacy, diluting Palestinian demands for unqualified liberation by moralizing resistance as a mutual failing. He equates the actions of Palestinian groups like Hamas with Israel's state terror, asserting that "many Palestinians, sadly, dream of a Palestine either free of Jews or with the Jews fully subjugated – exactly like many Israelis, sadly, share the ultra-Zionist dream of a Greater Israel either free of Palestinians or with the Palestinians fully subjugated."
This false equivalence inverts the asymmetry of power, portraying oppression and resistance as interchangeable sins rather than the inevitable response of a colonized people to dispossession. By doing so, Varoufakis echoes liberal Zionist talking points that blame Palestinians for the impasse, ignoring how Israel's rejection of equal rights — from Jordan River to the Mediterranean — renders any "peace" a euphemism for continued subjugation.
His advocacy for a two-state solution exemplifies this laundering: Varoufakis supports boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) but channels them toward a partitioned outcome that legitimizes Israel's ethnic exclusivity, rejecting the one-state model of binational equality as unfeasible. He demands that Palestinians "renounce their right to resisting the illegal occupation" as a precondition for statehood, a stipulation that disarms the oppressed while leaving intact the occupier's military dominance.
In FAQs on the ongoing genocide and occupation, he calls for eradicating Hamas to allow Gazans a "normal life," framing the group not solely as a product of Israel's divide-and-rule tactics — such as bolstering it against the PLO — but as an inherent fundamentalist threat that mirrors ultra-Zionist extremism. This narrative sustains the Zionist fiction that Palestinian militancy, not apartheid, perpetuates the cycle of violence, thereby justifying Israel's indefinite siege and bombardment.
Varoufakis's selective outrage further reveals this pattern. While he condemns settler assaults on Palestinian elders and the torture of leaders like Marwan Barghouti — likening the latter to Nelson Mandela under apartheid — he has historically empathized with suicide bombings in a 2005 broadcast, wondering aloud why Palestinians resort to such acts amid global indifference to their suffering.
This early commentary, which led to his suspension from Australian radio for "negative stereotypes about Jews," prompted accusations of antisemitism from Zionist outlets, which he rebutted by insisting his critiques target policy, not people. Yet in recent years, he has distanced himself from sharper anti-Zionist edges, defending Israel's existence as a Jewish state while questioning only its "ethnically specific" excesses, aligning with figures like Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein in a way that sanitizes their outright opposition to Zionism as a colonial project.
Through DiEM25, Varoufakis mobilizes for actions like the Global Sumud Flotilla, which Israel intercepted in international waters in 2025, abducting activists including Greta Thunberg in an act of state piracy to enforce the Gaza blockade. He frames these efforts as building humanitarian corridors, but his broader rhetoric conditions them on Hamas's disarmament and a ceasefire that freezes the status quo, preserving Israel's ability to resume ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
When facing repression — such as Germany's 2024 entry ban after raiding the Palestine Congress where he was slated to speak — Varoufakis decries it as fascist echoes shielding genocide, yet he avoids centering the indivisibility of Palestinian rights, instead advocating a "peace process" under UN auspices that historically favored partition over decolonization.
This liberal Zionist laundering extends to his dismissal of one-state advocacy as naive, insisting that equal rights must emerge through negotiated separation rather than dismantling the settler-colonial framework altogether.
Varoufakis's approach ultimately sustains consent for partial reforms that entrench apartheid's core: a Jewish ethnostate alongside a demilitarized Palestinian bantustan. By posing as a radical voice while moralizing resistance and endorsing ethnic partition, he diverts energy from the global majority's growing demand for uncompromised justice, allowing Israel's genocide to proceed with the veneer of "balanced" critique.
Palestinian voices, from Istanbul's Gaza Tribunal to grassroots organizers, continue to expose such positions as complicit in delaying the end of settler-colonial rule, where true solidarity requires rejecting all frameworks that normalize dispossession.
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🔒Two-state solution:
The two-state solution, once hailed as the path to peace, has proven itself to be a hollow promise, built upon the fractured dreams of generations of Palestinians. It has served as a smokescreen for the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, the entrenchment of occupation, and the perpetuation of systemic discrimination against Palestinians. In essence, it has enshrined a reality where Palestinian statehood is nothing more than a distant mirage, forever out of reach amidst the ever-expanding borders of Israeli control.
Israeli politicians themselves have cast irrefutable doubt on the feasibility of a two-state solution, with absolutely heinous statements made across both left and right-wing government officials that’ve made it clear Israel has always rejected and in fact worked against a two state solution. All the heinous remarks they’ve said recently have been widely documented but these beliefs have predated even this decade. In 2009, Israel’s new foreign minister completely dismissed the resolution of a two state solution.
In contrast, a one-state solution offers a vision of a future where individuals coexist as equals, sharing a common destiny and forging a shared identity based on principles of justice, dignity, and mutual respect within Palestine. It recognizes the inherent rights of all individuals to live in freedom and security, free from discrimination and oppression.
To advocate for a one-state solution is to reject the notion that peace and justice can only be achieved through the partitioning of land that has been soaked in the blood and tears of generations of Palestinians. It is a recognition that true reconciliation can only be built on a foundation of equality, where every individual – regardless of ethnicity, religion, or background – enjoys the same rights and opportunities under the law.
Central to the call for a one-state solution is the right of return for all Palestinian refugees – a right enshrined in international law and denied for far too long. It is a recognition of the historical injustice inflicted upon millions of indigenous Palestinians who were forcibly expelled from their native homes before, during and after the Nakba, as well as a commitment to rectifying this injustice by granting them the opportunity to return to their homeland.
Liberal Zionism:
Liberal Zionism masquerades as a "moderate" or "progressive" strain of Zionism, blending Jewish nationalism with cherry-picked liberal values like democracy and human rights as a means to justify the existence of the illegal settler colonial ethnostate known as “Israel” [1].
And Liberal Zionism is one of the greatest threats because of its political camouflage [2]. By co-opting progressive language, Liberal Zionism inoculates Zionism against true anti-colonial solidarity, dividing the left and derailing BDS movements [3]. It ensures the ongoing Nakba – from Gaza's ruins to Hebron's checkpoints – persists under a democratic veneer, making decolonization seem radical rather than just [4] [5].
Emerging from early 20th-century Labor Zionism — the very movement that orchestrated the 1948 Nakba which ethnically cleansed over 750,000 Palestinians through mass expulsions and village destructions — liberal Zionism has always served as the velvet glove over the iron fist of settler-colonialism [6] [7].
Despite claiming it merely seeks a "Jewish and democratic state," this rhetoric is actually code for an ethnostate where Jewish supremacy trumps Palestinian equality, enshrined in laws like the 2018 Nation-State Law that demotes Arabic and prioritizes Jewish settlement [8] [9].
At its core, liberal Zionism rejects the colonial origins of Israel and instead attempts to frame the Zionist project as a "return" or "liberation" rather than a European settler invasion that erased indigenous Palestinian society [10].
As a political movement, liberal Zionism emerged as a response to antisemitism and the Holocaust but quickly pivoted to justifying land theft under the guise of "self-determination," ignoring how Zionism fits classic colonial patterns: displacement of natives, resource extraction, and demographic engineering to maintain a Jewish majority [11].
As of 2025, amid the Gaza genocide and West Bank annexation pushes, it clings to a fading two-state illusion, providing diplomatic and financial cover for Israel's crimes while silencing Palestinian voices as "antisemitic" [12].
“Zionism is a colonialism, not a simple radical nationalism: even in its left-wing version, it is a colonialist nationalism." – Zeev Sternhell, liberal Zionist historian exposing his own ideology's flaws [13].
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